FRIDA KAHLO: AN OPUS FOR A LIFE

As a birthday celebration for one of the most important art figures in Mexico and the world, ARTIKA publishers presents The Dreams of Frida Kahlo, an art book that includes unpublished drawings, paintings, and testimonies of this iconic Mexican artist. 

Frida Kahlo is a myth in her own right – a myth she herself brought on by intertwining her life and her work, the real and the dreamlike. Daughter of Guillermo Kahlo, a renowned German photographer during the “Porfiriato”, and Matilde Calderón, a strict and fervent Catholic Mexican conservative, this painter’s early days were, like the better part of her life, doused in eccentricity. 

Some of the Mexican artist’s most cathartic – and painful – events have mostly been kept from public scrutiny, like the streetcar accident she suffered as a young woman of 18. That incident would brand her for life, taking her to hospitals and through surgeries, to pains that would seem endless and a constant angst that she would then spill onto many of her paintings, an anesthetic of sorts in the face of such unbearable suffering.

In the words of María del Sol Argüelles San Millán, director of Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo – whose essay is featured in Frida Kahlo’s Dreams – “To her, the body was the main territory for experiencing life. Through it she knew beauty, pain, lost love, and unattachment. In her diary she depicts a tragic vision of her body when, in 1953, the year in which she had her right foot amputated and, soon after, a third of her leg, due to gangrene, she wrote, ‘I am disintegration’”.

Today, the Kahlo name reverberates not only in the artistic arena of galleries and museums; it has percolated into pop culture worldwide, having become a symbol influential to several esthetic, social, and even political, movements. 

For four years, a team of researchers, experts, and editors in ARTIKA have taken on the task of concocting Frida Kahlo’s Dreams, a different approach to the life and work of an artist about whom – it seemed – all had been said. 

The texts contained in the Study Book are illustrated with around 100 drawings, and countless paintings and photographs. The original illustrations are spread out all over the world in private collections and in museums in Mexico, the United States, and Europe, which makes Frida Kahlo’s Dreams the result of an in-depth journey to discover new marvels that this quintessential Mexican artist’s work had yet to reveal. 

Frida Kahlo’s Dreams is ARTIKA’s take on the myth surrounding Kahlo. This edition includes a unique case inspired by her work, a Study Book with close to 100 drawings, plus numerous paintings, photographs, and expert-authored texts, and an Art Book with 34 prints showcasing the most significant drawings of this world-renowned artist.

This is an edition limited to 2998 copies worldwide, showcasing a unique creation emulating Frida Kahlo’s own materials, tonal values, and aesthetics, which practically turns this artists’ book into a work of art in itself. 

As of June 22, 2021, both bilingual and monolingual editions of Frida Kahlo’s Dreams are available for purchase at artika.com .